Muffins
by Tia The Dutchess
Summary: AU; Artemis promises Wally a date if he doesn't die. That was five years ago. She's not on the team, and he walked out without a word after waking up from his coma. The team is desperate to find him and Artemis is too. She never was much of a pariah anyways.


July 4th 11:51 p.m. 2013

She was a pariah in most every sense and maybe that's why she needed them so much. Why she relied on them. She needed someone to cling to. Not someone she was involved with, not someone to fall with her but someone to keep her from falling.

That's why the team had made perfect sense.

It would save her from desolation, would bound her and five other heroes. She had no intention of getting involved, just thriving. Having her head pulled out of the water for her instead of having to struggle to keep it above.

She liked it this way. It was easier for her to breath at night and sometimes she felt like she might actually matter to someone, to these people. It was nice. It was easy. It was the sort of thing she could get used to.

That's why she left.

She got to involved, to invested. She found herself trying to push herself further into them. Into their lives and their problems. The only thing she could think to do was pull back. As hard and fast as she could.

Because if Artemis knew how to do anything, it would be to push away the things she needed the most.

It had only been a simple mission but it had gone so horribly wrong. Wally had landed his own bed in the medical bay in a coma of sorts and a shard of glass as long as her arm stuck in his leg, shattering the bone, piercing the skin and coming out the other side.

It wasn't the pain that did him in, it was the blood loss, and he went into shock and got very still and his heartbeat dropped so quickly that for a moment Conner sat straight up and his head shot to where Wally lie and he cried.

Conner's expression is what haunted her most. The shock on his face and the pain in his features. She found herself nervous, jittery, praying for Wally to be alright because obviously Batman was shitting them when he said the speedster was.

That's when she knew she was too close. She needed to step back, take a breather and be more professional.

The team had been devastated, her mother heartbroken, her father seemed to be the only one relieved with how things had played out. That's how she should have known she had made the wrong choice. But she didn't give it a second thought.

Wally still didn't wake up.

* * *

July 4th 5:36 p.m 2018

It was exactly five years later when the team showed up on her doorstep. They looked wary and tired and disheveled and being the courteous stanford student she was, she invited them in for tea.

The tea was disastrous. Megan cried the whole time, Conner looked as if he hadn't slept for months, Kaldur kept rubbing his temples, sighing and Dick looked more beaten than Artemis had ever seen him. There were two girls with them that Artemis had never seen before but she didn't ask because obviously they were important and obviously they were part of the team.

The team she was not part of. So why were they here?

She pretty much asked them that, save the bluntness and in a more gentle tone because obviously whatever it was it wasn't good.

The answer to her question was Wally. She didn't know how she had missed that he wasn't there, she shouldn't have because of the entire team he was the one that stood out the most with his optimistic attitude and positive energy. Wally had woken up a week ago, and he had walked out.

Just walked out.

No one knew where he went, they had checked everywhere. The last record they had of him was the Zeta Tube he took out to Los Angeles but by the time they looked into it he was long gone. They had no idea how to find them, L.A.X connected to almost everywhere, he could be anywhere in the world or he could have just driven.

It was Wally so of course it was unpredictable. And of course he was a speedster so that made it about a zillion times harder to track him.

She nodded in sympathy during the entire story and by the end of it the only thing left on her mind was why they were here, in Pal Alto, in her house.

Because if Wally was anywhere in the world, why would he be here? He was probably half way to Russia now and they were wasting their time. They were always wasting their time.

So again she asked them why they had come to her and Megan had broken down in tears and admitted in a snuffly voice that they needed her help and Artemis had walked out of the room.

The team sat in stunned silence for about a minute before Artemis came back into the room and pushed a box of Kleenex at Megan who smiled gratefully and blew her nose.

"What do I need to do." Artemis sighed.

The team went ecstatic and Dick seemed to have some life left in him after all because he started blabbing at Wally worthy speeds on all that needed to be done and all Artemis could do was sink farther back into her chair and think, _What have I gotten myself into?_

* * *

They weren't wasting their time as Artemis found out because they had a theory.

When Wally had walked out they threw around a couple ideas on where he might go and Dick had suggested that he would go see his parents (which he hadn't) and Kaldur had guessed maybe to find a girlfriend (again, no), and then Megan came out of her quiet stupor and said, "To visit Artemis." and pretty much everyone flipped.

Kaldur wanted to know why Wally would go see Artemis first considering that he hates her.

Dick wanted to know why Wally wouldn't have told them.

Conner wanted to know why he would start at L.A.X.

Zatanna and Raquel stayed silent because they still didn't feel quite in with the team.

After the loss of both Artemis and Wally the three teens started sticking with each other more and more. Maybe it was because they had been the original six and in one night it had all crumbled so quickly and left just two thirds of them.

Zatanna and Raquel were there as backup- as help but it was Dick, Megan, Conner and Kaldur who did the heavy lifting who treated the team as if it was their home. It was their life, they lived and breathed justice and Zatanna and Raquel merely just wallowed in it.

To answer all the questions Megan reasoned that usually someone woke up from a come disoriented and unknowing to how long they had been out. Somewhere in his subconscious Wally knew and heard every voice he had heard during his five year nap- and none of them were Artemis'.

So maybe it was the seemingly lack of her imprinted there over the last five years or the fact that he had the most vivid memories of her during that last night, but whatever it was he had walked out half-asleep still in search of her.

It still didn't explain L.A.X but artemis had a theory it was because before he had gone lights out they had a talk about where they would go if the team ended and she said somewhere near Los Angeles.

The teams original plan of hunt him around California didn't work though and so Artemis devised a crude, horribly bland plan that if done right could just work.

Dick had joked that she was getting rusty.

Artemis glared at him and said confidently, "There's no rust on me."

Because she was going to catch Wally, whether or not it killed her. She had walked away and she was not going to let him do the same whether or not it was just a coma induced vacation.

She had told Wally about the Cafe while he lay in Megan's bio ship, he was on the verge of unconsciousness and while everyone else was scurrying around the ship making frantic calls to the Batman and Superman and any Hospitals near by, Artemis sat on the ground with Wally's head in her lap stroking his hair and telling him stories.

He had already lost so much blood he wasn't sure how much more he could loose and so she took to telling him silly little things in a calm, pleasant voice.

She talked about California most because it was lovely and Wally had never gone and she wanted him to go.

She had blurted out whatever came to mind and so she began talking about Cafe De Soliel in San Jose, and she had bragged that her sister waitressed there for a summer and how it had the best latte and muffins and with the last of his strength he had said, "sounds nice, I want to go."

but even his voice sounded weak and his breaths became lighter and more desperate and she had started crying when he eyelids fluttered open and closed and with a pained expression he had murmured, "s'okay Artemis, I've come back from worse."

And she had laughed because she was fairly sure that he hadn't but in the end when his breaths became so shallow you couldn't see his chest move she just buried her face in his hair and told him that she was going to kill him if he died.

* * *

July 5th 2018 8:12 a.m

She folded her hands nervously and crossed her legs and ordered a latte and muffin and she waited. The team wasn't coming as back up, they were staying at a hotel and Artemis told them she'd call if she needed help because she would be fine and this was her business.

Everyone was reluctant at first except for Megan who nodded firmly and whoever protested or said otherwise got a smack on the back of the head and the meanest glare she had ever seen coming from the small martian.

Someone settled into the stool next to hers and she didn't have to see the red hair and freckles to know who it was. "I wasn't sure you were coming." She said without looking at him.

"Me either." He admitted. "But a pesky comma wouldn't keep me from our first date."

The waitressed pushed a muffin and latte in front of her. "Who said this was a date?"

"You did." Wally clarified trying to steal her Muffin, she swatted his hand away.

With a little smile she said, "I did didn't I?" Before breaking her muffin in half and offering some to him.

The part of the story she had failed to tell the rest of the team (not including Megan because her best friend was a nosy little psychic) was that the last thing she had said to him, before the entourage of nurses and doctors had surrounded him, was whispered so lowly that even conner couldn't hear and it had made the corners of Wally's mouth quirk up.

"Is it July Fifth?" He asked.

She nodded. "Exactly."

"Then I'm about five years late." He took a bite of his muffin.

"Good thing I'm patient." She said. And then he kissed her.

"You know what?" He said. "These really are the best muffins."


End file.
